Nightstruck - Jenna Black Page 0,42
how haggard he looked, I knew I had to head my mother off at the pass. Dad didn’t need her haranguing him on top of everything else.
“I’ve got Bob,” I reminded her, keeping my voice conspicuously light. “And the press is exaggerating like you wouldn’t believe. It’s really not that big a deal.”
The prospect of heading off to Boston for an indefinite stay held no appeal. Maybe I’d be safer there, but my mom was as much of a workaholic as my dad, which meant I’d be spending most of my time alone in her condo in a strange city where I knew no one. No thanks.
The fact was, as screwed up as everything was around here, this was my home. I’d used school as an explanation/excuse for why I chose to stay with Dad instead of moving with Mom, but that had only been one of my many reasons. At least when Dad left me home alone for hours on end it was for a good and important reason. Mom did it because she was at the beck and call of her corporate clients, who thought the bottom line was the only thing that mattered in the world. I would never admit it to her, but that was an excuse I couldn’t muster much respect for. Especially when she complained so bitterly about Dad’s hours.
“But with everything that’s going on—” she started, but I cut her off.
“I’m fine, Mom. And I don’t want to miss school. I’d never be able to keep up, and you know I can’t let my grades tank my senior year if I want to get into a good college.” Our teachers reminded us of how important our senior year grades were all the time, though I suspected their motives were somewhat self-serving. “It’s not like there’s rioting in the streets or anything.” Yet.
I could tell my mom wasn’t quite buying it, but she reluctantly backed off. I made a mental note to call my dad and let him know I hadn’t told Mom what I’d seen. I had a feeling she’d be calling him herself sooner rather than later, and I didn’t want him letting the cat out of the bag. If she knew I’d experienced some of the weirdness up close and personal, she would probably come to Philly herself and physically drag me off to Boston.
After getting off the phone, I made yet another valiant effort to work on my term paper. My brain still wasn’t exactly laser focused, but I managed to get a couple of paragraphs written before someone knocked on the front door. I was up in my bedroom with my laptop sitting on my lap, and I frowned in annoyance at the interruption.
Bob was downstairs, barking like a hellhound. I wasn’t expecting anybody, so I sat on my bed and waited for whoever it was to go away. As a general rule, no one who comes to your door unexpectedly in the city is anyone you want to talk to, especially during a crime spree.
Bob kept barking, and whoever was at the door knocked a second time. That was unusually persistent, and I wondered if there was any chance it could be Luke.
Probably not, I told myself. Luke would have known to call first. My dad was a walking PSA and was always preaching about how to maintain personal safety while living in the city. Not answering the door when you weren’t expecting someone was one of his oft-repeated safety tips for women.
Even with this realization, I found myself putting the laptop aside and hopping off the bed. There was a third knock on the door as I was making my way down the stairs—Bob was barking so hard and loud I feared for the structural integrity of our house—and then my cell phone chirped. I pulled it from my back pocket and saw a text from Piper: Come to the door before Bob barks himself to death.
I stopped halfway down the stairs and stared at the message. It was Piper at the door? She had certainly heard my dad’s safety lectures before, and the thought that she had shown up unannounced was slightly shocking.
Coming, I texted back, wondering what she was doing here. Getting a spot on Piper’s social calendar was usually nearly impossible without extensive advance planning, and it was totally unlike her to just show up out of the blue like this.
Bob was majorly worked up by the time I got to the door, and